Building Cultural Competence in Social Care

From the 3rd till the 5th of June, JRS Malta organized a training called "Building Cultural Competence in Social Care" at the Dolmen Hotel. This training was intended for social workers and other professionals who come in contact with migrants and asylum seekers through their work.

The first day of the training was dedicated to key note speakers who provided participants with increased awareness of the local context pertaining to the asylum procedure, information on how to provide culturally competent care, and input on how to challenge stereotypes and how to work with cultural mediators. Speakers included Dr. Marceline Naudi, Dr Muireann Ní Raghallaigh, Prof Rachel Tribe, Dr Julian Caruana and Mr Salif Mohammed. A number of asylum seekers and refugees also gave their personal testimony.

Throughout the following two days, participants had the opportunity of choosing two out of the four different workshops where together with the foreign and local facilitators they discussed pertinent topics related to working with refugees and asylum seekers and the challenges they face when providing a service to this particular client group.

This training was part of a project entitledPATHS, Promoting Access To Health and Social Services for migrants and asylum seekers. This project seeks to improve migrants’ access to health and social services through direct service provision as well as providing training and support to mainstream service providers aimed at increasing their capacity to provide services to this population. It follows up on a previous JRS project, funded by ERF2010, which ran between July 2011 and June 2012.